Succession Planning, Performance Management:
Who is Minding the Shop?
Maria Dweggah, WHO
Succession
planning is the ability to analyze and predict the needs of the organization and
its people in order to meet planned objectives and goals and develop and implement
appropriate policies which will ensure that newly created posts or posts vacated
due to retirement, promotion or unforeseen circumstances are filled as expeditiously
as possible with qualified persons, and with minimum disruption and negative impact
on programmes and staff. Unfortunately, this is not always a managerial or HR
priority and more often than not succession planning gives way to stop-gap management
when nobody takes responsibility. Staff, all staff, those in HR and at managerial
level in particular, will agree to the benefits of planning ahead. It is therefore
difficult to understand why “ on traîne
les pieds” , especially when the date
and time of departure of a staff member is known, for instance, through retirement
or a separation agreement. What message is sent to the staff about to leave, to
the members of the team, to the collaborators, inside the organization as well
as outside, to the donors who finance the project and or programme. Some will
say it is a strategy to save money. Two, three, four, five months, ten months
without replacement adds up to a tidy sum. Could this really be a mechanism to
save money or is succession planning just not a priority. If some misguided souls
use this technique to save money, they should be aware that a lot more than money
is lost in not planning ahead—lack of continuity, loss of credibility, disruption
in the workflow, reduced efficiency, diminished motivation, as well as a ripple
affect which is equally damaging. Important to note is the risk of losing good
candidates, who, frustrated and discouraged by the lengthy recruitment procedures,
choose to stay where they are or get scooped up by other agencies or programmes.
The reasons why managers opt for the crisis management approach is not clear as
it is certainly not beneficial in the long run. How often has your team or department
found itself without a leader, project manager, essential key staff or trained
support staff? How often have retired staff (usually the same ones) been brought
back, time and time again to sit on a vacant posts. Please, let there be no misunderstanding,
there is nothing wrong with retirees coming back to give a hand, however giving
a hand usually ends giving the whole arm and a leg. Why couldn’t these same
dedicated persons who are so skilled and knowledgeable be used to train and mentor
serving staff so that they can too arrive at a ripe old age of retirement. How
often have staff been appointed with an ad
interim function, only to lose out to external
candidates in a competition. How often have temporaries been brought in from the
outside to find themselves the “owners” of the post once the post is
advertised two, three, four years down the line and to be then faced with issues
of gender and geographical distribution and lack of skills mix?
How often have people
been recruited and put on a post without the benefits of an overlap/learning period
with the former post owner. These practices discourage active recruitment, training,
planning ahead, and reduce promotional opportunities for serving staff. Succession
planning should be an ongoing part of the way people are managed, trained and
promoted. It is not “rocket science.” It is cost effective, as it reduces
money and time spent on recruiting and training. It is beneficial as it improves
opportunities for promotion for staff within by creating a pool of staff ready
to step in at any moment. It avoids the disruptive aspects of internal promotions
which can develop into a game of musical chairs that develops as staff are shifted
to fill the gaps. Patrick J. Kieger in the April issue of Workforce,
described the succession system of a private
sector company which could very well be set up in any of our international organisations.
It uses a system called Human Resource Planning System, which contains detailed
information on possible candidates for promotion within the company. The system
includes performance evaluations, rundowns of the candidates’ accomplishments
at the company, self-ratings. It relates succession planning to its employee evaluation
program. Information from evaluations becomes a useful tool in managing succession.
The company methodically works at preparing its pool of future internal candidates
for succession with a related training and career-development program. In our
UN world, there are probably as many performance management systems, the more
familiar terms being appraisals, year end performance review, as there are organisations.
It is a known fact that creating a perfect performance management tool is almost
impossible, not only in the private sector but also in the public one. With any
performance management system, it is not the system per se who is either good
or bad; it is how this tool is used. In order to take this system seriously, staff
need to be not only assured, but convinced that someone
is minding the shop and that this someone is truly interested in the
staff becoming better trained, more productive and more motivated. They need to
be convinced that this someone, their organization, is truly interested in their
professional development and advancement, otherwise the annual exercise becomes
a routine, ineffectual WIGI (within grade increase, step)
formality. Due the more complex and sometimes cumbersome procedures of HR in our
world, it may not be as easy to combine performance management with succession
planning as it is in the private sector. It is true that in comparison to the
private sector, a high percentage of middle and high management posts are filled
by inside candidates. But, due to our system of recruitment and selection, this
sometimes takes an inordinate amount of time. As we are currently in an HRM reform
mode, this would be an opportune time to take a closer look at the way we plan
our staffing. For the individual organisations, it will mean evaluating the effectiveness
of existing policies of the recruitment/selection procedures and performance management
plans and come up with some novel approaches as to how they can be linked to succession
planning.
The objectives of both the public and private sector should be the
same - a mechanism that will create more efficient and effective methods of evaluating,
stimulating, training and promoting staff. To reach this goal, it will require
increased investment and commitment by the organisations into setting up proper
monitoring mechanisms in the HR departments. This would assure succession
planning while respecting policies of gender, geographical distribution, staff
rules and regulations and overseeing that the process of assessing candidates
both from outside and within the organisation results in getting the best person
- at least they should try.
Throughout the
individual organizations there can be found pockets of programmes who are applying
succession planning practices in order to meet programme and staff member needs.
We should learn from these initiatives.
To Mind the Sthop : centralized (harmonized) management of staffing needs of the organization by gathering and processing information culled from performance evaluations; using these data to identify training and development needs of staff to better meet the objectives and goals of the organization; and maintaining the balance of retaining competent personnel and attracting outside people.
Epilogue to Job Search articles
A number of readers have contacted me regarding the articles “JOB SEARCH” and “EASIER SAID THAN DONE” and expressed appreciation for this kind of useful and practical information. I am happy that these articles have had some positive impact and that through my writing I am able to impart some theoretical and true life experience that may help. Yes, the sandwich shop story is true. Yes, there was a woman in the ladies room with a bowl of strawberries. What’s so strange about that? It WAS the strawberry season, after all. Yes, I was really waiting outside the wrong interview room. All of it is true. And for those of you who are too polite to ask, no, I did not get the job. But that is what life is about, ups and downs. I can be philosophical about it and say that it was not meant to be. Some of the greatest moves spring from disappointments and pain. Years back, I was working in a treat- ment/recovery center for alcoholics. By background up to then had been basically in social work/community organizing. I was finishing up my probationary period when my direct supervisor who was also the director of the program started to make advances of an unwelcomed nature. I informed him that if he did not stop I would report him. On the last day of my probation I was given my pay check with a note, “final check” I had been fired. No need to explain what I felt like. The whole world had just crumbled. As this was a city funded program I filed a formal sexual harassment complaint with a federal alphabet agency. During the investigation which took almost a year (and which came to the conclusion that no harassment had occurred), I was barred from further employment with the city. I could not find work. A single parent with a three year old, I went on welfare, on the dole, as they say in the UK. My self esteem was reduced to nothing. Depression ensued, countless interviews, nothing. Then there it was, a notice on the board – Secretary Training, Become a Secretary. Free training. Learn computers. In my wildest dreams, I would not have believed that I could learn how to use a computer. Eight months later, I had a certificate from this training program. I landed a great job, enrolled in company paid courses, moved up 5 grades in five years and almost tripled my salary. Thank you Mr Sexual Harasser. Thanks to you, I was able to move on. Thanks to you, I am now in WHO.
What happened to him? He was subsequently accused of sexual harassment by my successor. Again he got off. He was eventually fired — for embezzlement !!! Eh, oui, Life is like that sometimes.
Easier Said Than Done
(continued) Not to be discouraged by my unsuccessful attempt at a promotion,
I took the UN proficiency exam for Spanish. Caution, do not drink beer before
taking an oral exam in Spanish. It had a tendency to produce a loss of memory,
and cause you to use “estoy” instead of “soy”
not to mention forgetting all the correct verb endings. I sat for written test
this week. Three and one half hours!!! The monitor gave instructions in Spanish,
slow, nice, easy, very understandable Spanish. “Hey, piece of cake”
I thought. Then he put on the tape for the comprehension part of the test. The
speaker had to be the Grand Prix champion of speech speed . I had this urge to
yell out loud, “Would you please slow down!!! PARATE!!! STOP!!! I recommend
to all of you, especially the support staff: take the language proficiency exams.
You have six languages to chose from. So what if you fail once or twice. You get
the practice, you see where you need to do better then you take it again. It’s
extra money in your pocket and it looks good on your job applications. By the
way the UN Special is now available on the Web, so you do not need to
go searching for back issues